Shrugging into the coat Mrs. Inche held for him, he
cocked the felt hat jauntily on the side of his head.

“Always,” he proclaimed with gesture—­hand
on heart—­“always the ladies’
slave!”

XIII

RESPECTABILITY

But when it came to viscid second thought, alone in
the gloom of an unsympathetic taxicab, P. Sybarite
inclined to concede himself more ass than hero.
It was all very well to say that, having spread his
sails to the winds of Kismet, he was bound to
let himself drift to their vagrant humour: but
there are certain channels of New York life into which
even the most courageous mariner were ill-advised to
adventure under pilotage no more trustworthy than that
of sufficient champagne and a run of good luck.

Dutch House in Fortieth Street, West, wore the reputation
of being as sinister a dive as ever stood cheek-by-jowl
with Broadway and brazenly flaunted an all-night liquor
license in the face of law-abiding New York; of which
it was said that no sober man ever went there, other
than those who went to prey, and that no drunkard ever
escaped from it unfleeced; haunt of the most deadly
riff-raff to be found in Town, barring inmates of
certain negro stews on the lower West Side and of
some of the dens to which the sightseer does not
penetrate in the tour of Chinatown.

Grim stories were current of men who had wandered
thither in their cups, “for the lark of it,”
only to return to consciousness days afterwards, stripped,
shorn, and shattered in health bodily and mental,
to find themselves in some vile kennel miles from Dutch
House; and of other men who passed once through its
foul portals and—­passed out a secret way,
never to return to the ken of their friends....

Yet it stood, and it stands, waxing fat in the folly
of man and his greed.

And to this place P. Sybarite was travelling to deliver
a message from a famous demi-rep to a notorious gang
leader; with only a .25 calibre Colt’s automatic
and his native wit and audacity to guard the moderate
fortune that he carried with him in cash—­a
single hundredth part of which would have been sufficient
to purchase his obliteration at the hands of the crew
that ran the place.

However, in their ignorance his safety inhered; and
it was not really necessary that he advertise his
swollen fortunes; and as for the gold in his trousers
pocket—­a ponderable weight, liable to chink
treacherously when he moved—­P. Sybarite
removed this and thoughtfully cached it under one
of the cushions of his cab. It seemed a long
chance to take with a hundred dollars: but a hundred
dollars wasn’t a great deal, after all, to a
man as flush as he; and better lose it all (said he)
than make a noise like a peripatetic mint in a den
of thieves and worse....